Why Don’t We Change?

The Conference Board Review^® Article

Strategy and the Fat Smoker

Doing What's Obvious but Not Easy

By David Maister

Spangle, $29.99

There is no way to prove this, but I'll bet you dinner I'm right: I was the worst mid-level manager who ever lived.

I couldn't delegate. I micromanaged. I had unrealistic expectations of my employees (why wouldn't they willingly come into the office early on the Friday after Thanksgiving? I brought bagels). And I hadn't a clue about how to play office politics, or how to protect my people during endless turf wars.

Oh, I was great at strategy. And I could do a brilliant SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) assessment before coffee. But even though I read all the management books, and could articulate (artfully, if I do say so myself) what needed to get done, I couldn't get anyone to do it either easily or well.

Why? David Maister would say it was for the same reason that he was a fat smoker for thirty-five years.

No one — especially no one as smart as Maister, a Harvard Business School Ph.D. — would argue that either being either overweight or a smoker is a good thing. And yet for more than three decades he was a heart attack waiting to happen.

My failings, his, and those of most companies, Maister argues, stem from the same faulty premise: Just because you know what needs to be done doesn't mean it will be. In fact, he goes further. Creating the right strategy — whether it is for increasing your company's competitive advantage, or your own health — is not that difficult. "What is very hard," he writes, "is actually doing what you know to be good for you in the long-run, in spite of short-run temptations."

What follows from that is clear:

1. It is all well and good to know how to set strategy — and if you don't, there are literally hundreds of books, by authors from Michael Porter to Jim Collins to Gary Hamel — that can help.

2. And it is perfectly fine to tell people to go implement that strategy, as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan did in Execution.

3. But that doesn't necessary mean anything is going to happen.

And that, of course, takes us back to the incorrect assumption that knowing how to resolve an issue is actually the same as solving it. That is just silly.

"The problem is that many change efforts are based on the assumption that all you have to do is explain to people that their lives could be better, convince them that the goals are worth going for, and show them how to do it," Maister writes. "But this assumption is patently false. If it were true, there would be no drug addicts, alcoholics, or bad marriages in the world. 'Oh, I see, this behavior's not good for me? Ah well then, I'll stop, of course.' What nonsense."

So why don't we change? It boils down to the problem inherent in delayed gratification. The rewards are in the future, the pain in the present. We have to put up with all kinds of unpleasantness now — deprivation, disruption, discomfort — in exchange for a promised benefit later.

Who the heck wants to do that? And yet whether we are talking about losing weight, kicking the cigarette habit, or implementing a new strategy, things frequently need to change.

So how do you actually launch a successful change initiative? Although he doesn't put it this way, Maister divides his answer into two parts: strategy and tactics. His strategy component is relatively simple, and here he breaks little new ground: First, you need to lay the foundation for the change effort — i.e., you need to figure out what needs to change and why. Then, you must create a compelling image to get people to buy into the change — explaining what is in it for them. And finally, you focus on making the vision a reality.

He is better on what steps to take to make all this happen:

"If strategy is to be lived and achieved, it must be publicly tracked, measured and monitored." No exceptions. If you are going on a diet, you need to step on the scale at least once a week. If you vow you are going to compete on customer service, you need to constantly measure how well you are actually doing in satisfying your clients' needs.
Leadership must model the behavior they want, not just talk about it. In other words, the boss cannot say, "I want them to change, but my behavior is fine." Employees spend an inordinate amount of time watching what the boss does. If the boss acts as if the change initiative doesn't matter, you can bet that the employees will as well. Senior managers must take exactly the same actions they are urging on their staff.
Employees must volunteer. Yes, of course the leader must offer a vision around which people can rally. But even if it's as compelling as that of Steve Jobs ("We are going to build insanely great products") or as vivid as that of Bill Gates ("We are going to put a computer on every desk in every home"), the employee's motivation "must be intrinsic," Maister writes, "because the essence of successful strategic change is not technique, but will." Unless employees opt in willingly, nothing much is going to happen. Maister says a leader can help make this happen by acting as a coach, "drawing people's attention to imperfections in the status quo."
We need to acknowledge that real change is extremely difficult and that we need to work on it every day — not as an addition to our "real job" but with the understanding that it is our real job.

Maister's title is wonderful. His insights are sound. And the action steps make sense — recognizing, of course, that as he correctly points out, knowing what to do and having the resolve to do it are two radically different things — even if someone gives you a game plan.

But there is another reason this book is so intriguing: Maister, an incessant and popular blogger, has decided to publish this book himself. (Spangle Press is his own tiny imprint.) It will be interesting to see how — if at all — that decision affects sales. Little-known authors need the credibility and publicity efforts a traditional publishing house can provide. But Maister already has a cult following, at least among professional-services firms, and for PR he has hired Mark Fortier, to whom publishers frequently turn when they want to get the word out about a big book. My guess: The book will do just fine as a self-published work.

Will Strategy and the Fat Smoker make me an effective manager? No. But then, nothing will. I long ago decided that trying to make me a manager is analogous to trying to explain red to someone who is color-blind. When it comes to managing, I am as color-blind as you can get. But at least I have now learned a fundamental reason why managing is so darn hard.

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